A demand-based messaging system is any communication system that enables a person to exchange electronic messages with another person over a communications media. Demand-based messaging systems typically comprise a network of data processing machines and a messaging program operable on at least one machine to transfer electronic messages over the network to one or more of the other machines. Electronic messages typically are composed of a variety of information, including message data and transmission data. As those terms are used here, “message data” generally refers to the substance of the message, such as text or images, while “transmission data” generally refers to the information required to deliver or respond to the message, such as the correspondents' electronic addresses. Electronic messages also may include status information, such as the time and date that the message was composed, sent, or received.
LOTUS NOTES, MOZILLA, and MICROSOFT OUTLOOK are exemplary messaging programs that enable users to exchange electronic mail messages through networked computers. Instant messaging (“IM”) programs such as MSN MESSENGER and YAHOO! MESSENGER, which have gained popularity in recent years, exemplify another embodiment of messaging programs that enable users to exchange electronic messages in real-time through networked computers.
Electronic mail messages are often sent to a group of recipients. Such recipients fall into three categories: the addressee, the copied recipient, and the recipient who receives a blind copy. The addressee receives the message and sees who has been copied. The recipient who has been copied receives the message and knows to whom the message was directed. The recipient who receives a blind copy receives the message, knows to whom the message was directed and who received copies, but the addressee and the copied recipients do not know the identity of the blind copy recipient.
An originator may want to send a bulk message to all recipients, but a small section unique to each individual recipient. For example, a user may send instructions to coordinate an event, with a unique time assignment to each recipient who receives the email. Sometimes a need arises to vary the message sent to one or more recipients. A sender of an email may not want its entire contents to go to all recipients. Normally, the sender would have to break up the email and send it in segments. Having to send multiple emails wastes the sender's time as well as wastes disk space on the server and bandwidth on the network.
An originator may desire to send an email where only a portion is intended for all recipients, another portion only for select recipients, and a final portion that is not to be sent to certain other recipients. Perhaps the material sent to the select recipients is confidential. The material not to be sent to some recipients may be attachments that are already available to them on their server.
An originator may desire to send an email containing a section of text that is of common interest to all the recipients followed by text that is specific to each recipient. Perhaps the specific text is the recipient's new password. The desire is to send the specific text only to the intended recipient. The common text would go to all recipients.
The need to vary the message can arise with a group of recipients in one status grouping or in more than one status grouping. For example, the sender may want to provide additional information for a recipient who is less familiar with the context of the message than other recipients. Likewise, a user may want to send special instructions to a recipient such as a reminder to a blind copy recipient not to reply because the user does not want the other recipients to know he included the blind copy recipient. Presently, varying message text requires sending separate messages.
Sending separate messages requires time to create the separate electronic messages and to copy and paste the content of the separate messages. Since the messages are sent separately, some of the reply messages will not go to all of the recipients. In particular, reply messages will not go to all recipients when the reply comes from a message sent only to a subset of the overall group of recipients. In order to solve this problem, the sender could include the subset of recipients on both emails. In that event, the subset of recipients receives redundant emails. Sending multiple electronic messages consumes more network bandwidth and storage space. Increased consumption of network bandwidth and storage space increases costs. Costs further increase when the email is large or has large attachments. If an originator of an email had an easy way to segment a single email, the originator would save time as well as network disk storage space and bandwidth. Therefore, a need exits for an improved electronic messaging system that allows transmission of e-mail segments to different recipients.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,118,856 discloses receiving an email and automatically forwarding it to a remote device. The forwarding is done by an act of the recipient, not the sender. The forwarding may be limited to a selective portion of the original email. This patent is primarily concerned with forwarding received emails to a cell phone or a text pager. The forwarding is based on the content of the message. For example, the forwarding may be done based on a particular sender.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,446,118 discloses a system for receiving email while away from your computer without having to subscribe to a “commercial, public network” such as SkyTel. A portion of the email, such as the header, may be all that is transmitted to an email notification device. Other, limited information, like message size and when the message was originally received, may also be transmitted.